RetroPie – Running ROMs from a Network Share

Good to know: If you are accessing your RetroPie installation over SSH the default Raspbian username is pi and the default password is raspberry.

Copy the existing ‘roms’ folder structure to your server

For EmulationStation to be able to see your rom files the paths given to it within /etc/es_systems.cfg need to be recreated on your networked server. Connect to your RetroPie and browse to its roms folder for reference on how each system folder is named. Either copy these folders to your networked server or manually create the folders on your networked server using the same directory names.

If you prefer to not use the EmulationStation system directory names and keep the current folder structure you have on your networked server you’ll need to edit es_systems.cfg. Use this command to copy the configuration file to the home directory wherein it will be editable through SMB (//RETROPIE/configs/all/emulationstation) or FTP.

Good to know: If you’d like to host the entire RetroPie folder remotely you can do so by removing the /roms directories from the mount command above. Make sure to have a copy of the RetroPie installation on your remote server or EmulationStation won’t be able to start RetroPie!

Restart your Raspberry Pi with sudo reboot or by simply unplugging the power cord.

Alternatively, if you have a shared folder that allows guest access, you can use the following line in your autostart.sh:

Restart and check the folder to make sure it didn’t have any issues mounting at boot

sudo reboot

sudo ls RetroPie/roms/snes

With any luck (and if you have a ton of SNES ROMs like myself), it will be fairly apparent that it was able to mount the share at boot.

Saving Games

Go ahead and make sure everything works. Don’t get to far into a game though, you might not be able to save. If you hit ‘Select + R’ (default save command) and it gives you an error, the easiest solution I’ve found is as follows.

We need to edit retroarch.cfg by deleting the # infront of the savestate_directory and savefile_directory lines and put in the desired path. I’ll be using ~/RetroPie-Save. First, make the target folder: